In Recovery

Wrapping up this short storyline this week, assuming Game Of Thrones premiers this weekend. I’m pretty sure it’s this weekend, but I was also pretty sure yesterday’s date was somewhere around the 20th (SPOILERS: it was the 26th), so I have apparently lost a little time due to staying up all night watching mediocre movies (moviocres) and thus I have become an unreliable judge of when things are and are not.

COMMENTERS: Have you ever purposefully deprived yourself of something that, while not life threatening, probably wasn’t that good for you? Did you succeed? Have you had any self-imposed restrictions that might seem silly to others? No Hot Pockets on odd numbered days? No dating people you met during a hostage crisis? No driving past the home where you murdered that transient? That’s just goofy. Transients can’t haunt you because they don’t have souls.

I gave up complaining for Lent once…lasted about 4 days before all my pent up rage at stupid people caused me to transform into She-Hulk and destroy half of Chicago. Never doing that again. Totally ruined my favorite pair of jeans.

I once gave up porn for Lent, then the real world started feeling like a porn movie. Women's shirts were more expressive of their bosoms, their pants were lower and shorter, their underwear was more visible, and they bent over in front of me more often than usual. Talk about poor timing!

I switched from using real sugar to artificial sweeteners a number of years ago as part of a new diet I was trying. (I had tried everything else, and kept gaining weight, so I was desperate.) To really understand the sacrifice here, it's important to realize that I was putting several teaspoons of white sugar in my morning tea, and several more in my oatmeal. (I have an extreme case of sweet toothiness – always have. A lot of stuff just tastes bad to me if it isn't sweet enough. I suspect there's something terribly wrong with my palate.)

I also had to cut my calorie intake quite a bit, so I was always hungry at first until my metabolism adjusted. I was a complete and total bitch for about 2-3 weeks until I got used to it, but eventually I lost forty pounds. These days, I still rely on artificial sweeteners and only indulge in sugary items occasionally. I don't care what any "natural" foods nuts say about artificial sweeteners; if they didn't exist, I'd be as big as a house.

I just don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners. I find they either have a bitter aftertaste or taste TOO sweet. I accidentally got a bottle of flavored water with sucralose that I thought was unsweetened, after just one mouthful I could taste nothing but "sweet" for three days.

You may be what they call a "super taster". Different people have differing densities of taste buds on their tongue. Some people have lots of taste buds packed closely together and literally taste everything more strongly then those who have fewer. Such people are much more sensitive to bitter tastes and are usually more drawn to sweet things.

I've had to impose limits on video game playing. I may play for one hour or one big mission a day IF and only IF I get something productive done like dishes or clean underwear. And it can't be every single day. (I do indulge now and then with a planned marathon game day where I fuel myself on pringles – they're easy to eat with a controller in your hand – and Dr. Pepper for ridiculous amounts of hours.)

If I don't impose these restrictions I will lose all sense of time and place and my muscles will stop working like I've gone into rigor mortus. Video game achievements play right into all my OCD needs to check things off lists and be done 100%.

Yeah, some achievements are heinous. I prefer the ones where their names ARE the instructions to get them and ones you get totally by accident. I hate the ones where you have to get through THE WHOLE GAME to get without messing up once, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and its achievement, "The Foxiest of the Hounds".